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I recently participated in a meetup with the promising title “Ethics in AI”. Dr. Chris McKillop conducted the meetup, and she did not only has a lot of theoretical background under her arm, but also a great deal of experience with working on the field of Data Science and AI.

I just finished reading “Head First Data Analysis “, by Michael Milton, and it was the first book I’ve ever read from the “Head First” series.

The book was very easily approachable, with concepts introduced only when they were necessary and to make a good, valid, practical point. The whole structure of the book revolves around practice and “real life” examples (although, greatly simplified) to prove how methodical logical steps can naturally lead to a good analysis mechanism.

I’ve noticed a trend in the AI research field, and one I feel pretty proud to talk about.

Given the latest advancements, even if there is or there is not a plateau in research in these next years, means that there is definitely a technological advance to nations or corporations that have the first step into new revolutionary AI. I am not talking about the new Skynet (although some people suggest it), but rather who gets the head start that creates the new vicious cycle. Those where our regulations are not enough to keep up, and we need to rethink what our laws are regarding economy, or military, or ethics.

We’ve all head the concerns on military self-driving attack drones. We’ve all heard the concerns about life-or-death decision taking self-driving cars. We’ve all heard and watched the theories, movies and games that revamp the Turing Test and want us to reconsider how deep we are in the rabbit hole.

And Musk’s OpenAI platform was a first response to that, with a clear strategy: make advancements available for everyone. The real strategy behind OpenAI is that when the time comes for that tipping point, such information will be available to everyone, enhancing competition and leveling up risks of a company/nation taking advantage. Of course, you might agree that this is a very complex problem and claiming that this is a simple solution that works is really oversimplifying the situation.

But it is, without a doubt, a clever one.

Very recently, researches raised up their voice against opacity in research journals, which is another example of this tendency. I share the thought that research and technological advance should be benefit for all of humanity. Not only because it will prevent unfairness, but also will benefit us all. Is there any good reason to willfully keep other organizations/nations behind in technological advance? Ethically speaking, none.

I very much like this new tendency, and as we’ve seen non-profit software foundations rise successfully in the past few decades, this might be the right time to make knowledge a concern for all of humanity.

I just wrote a guest post at Making Sense’s blog: A Novice’s Introduction to Data Science. Hopefully the first in a series, but for the moment, feel free to check that one out to find out what Data Science is and why you all the hype about it lately.

This is another great guest post, this time from Rae Steinbach. She is a graduate of Tufts University with a combined International Relations and Chinese degree. After spending time living and working abroad in China, she returned to NYC to pursue her career and continue curating quality content. Rae is passionate about travel, food, and writing, of course.

Her post talks about the impact that Google’s AI vision will have on retail businesses. Thanks Rae; thank you very much!

During 2017’s Google I/O, where developers from all around the world explore emerging technologies together, the company announced several new elements for both Google Home and Google Assistant. For instance, Google Assistant, now equipped with AI, will be able to provide relevant information about your environment by “seeing” it through the phone’s camera. You could just point the lens at a business you pass on the street, suddenly receiving information about its services, customer reviews, and more.